Thanks for this post, Patricia. Nobody likes to think about homelessness. It's an issue we all would prefer to ignore.

You brought up so many good points, especially about services for homeless youth. When I was a youth counselor, this was my most difficult issue to address because of the lack of services. There were several shelters in LA and Orange Counties that would accept youth 17 and under, but as soon as a kid turned 18 he or she aged out of the system. The intake process at the KT House at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center takes 2 weeks, because clients have to test negative for TB and substance abuse. And when you have a kid who is looking for immediate housing, 2 weeks can seem like a lifetime. The worst case scenario is when a kid walks into your office at 5:00 PM on a Friday. What do you do with them for the weekend after all of the other referral services are closed?

The sad part is that there will never be enough beds, especially in our current economic climate. The City of Long Beach has a 10 year plan to eliminate homelessness that has been revised each year since the 1990's. It's a joke. In the fifth largest city in California, there is only ONE adult homeless shelter. That is so pathetic.

I'm sorry to rant, but this is obviously a topic that I feel very strongly about.

Thanks for your excellent and informative comment, Serena. It's a good rant.

It's the Stupid Economy

Most Americans still hold to the dangerous illusion that the US is still a democracy. In spite of the evidence they refuse to accept the fact they’re not the rulers, they’re the ruled.

The rulers of this country have more wealth than anyone in history, a terrifying military capability is coupled with the morals of Caesar in Gaul and exercise effective control over information distribution and opinion making.

Their breathless fans at ABC, CBS, CNN, FAUX, NBC and the editorial board of the NY Times speak about godlike qualities of these Captains of Industry and Commerce just like their predecessors did in 1929. But the mainstream media never use the term that best describes them – the ruling class. That would be an admission that money doesn’t just talk, it commands and it that it brooks no interference.

Our economy is in a steep nosedive because of their greed, and may crash and burn. In the process of squeezing the last drop of profit, they’re wrecking things again. The tent cities Patricia describes were once called Hoovervilles. The government that gets elected in November is going to get a nasty reminder of how furious people can get when they’re hungry and homeless. Obamavilles? McCain City?

The latest BLS reports show 10 consecutive months of declining wages and another big jump in unemployment. Adjusted for inflation, workers are getting 3.1 % less than a year ago. The number of workers with health insurance is steadily dropping, and at the same time poverty and homelessness are steadily gowning. About a third of all retirees are forced to work and even them many of them have to decide between paying for food, and or rent, and or medical care.

These conditions are the result of decades of union busting and the export of good jobs. Unions and unions alone created the relative prosperity or the post World War II era but without a large, adequately paid workforce the economy is tanking. That’s why “Last hired, first fired” is no longer an echo of the past, it a reality for African Americans and others. It's why immigrant/imported workers get the worst of both worlds and why millions of women with children but without spouses are entering the ranks of the poor, even if they hold down two jobs. (It was just so damn brave of the Democrats to give them $6.75 an hour. So brave.)

Clinton ran on the slogan “it’s the economy, stupid,” but what got him elected was Perot. After his election he proved that his slogan was right for business but not for workers and conusmers.

Clinton followed Greenspans “financial markets strategy,” and stock market speculators took off like vultures looking for carrion. Clinton pushed deregulation, and the vultures got their carrion in the form of predatory mortgages. They got so much of it they choked and the market tanked, throwing homeowners into the streets.

In a KC Labor article Bill Onash quotes Timothy Canova’s Dissent article, The Legacy of the Clinton Bubble, describing The Mother Of All Deregulation. Canova says

“Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, one of the most far-reaching banking reforms since the Great Depression. It swept aside parts of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that had provided significant regulatory firewalls between commercial banks, insurance companies, securities firms, and investment banks.”

This created “fictitious capital”,which when it’s relaxing with it’s feet up on the coffee table is called Enron, Bears Sterns, Feddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Fannie Mae. The money was real enough but it got skimmed and what was left was “fictitious capital”. Clinton’s pro-business policies were disastrous, and so was his policy of gutting welfare, health care, unemployment insurance and other safety nets for working people.

Clinton is Mr. NAFTA, which is logical since NAFTA benefited his wife, Ms.Wal-Mart so much. Obama’s economic advisors are holdover of the Clinton/Gore administration and McCain’s represent the voodoo economics of Reagan and the Bush’s. Obama is a Clinton clone and McCain is a Ragan/Bush clone. Neither of them has the wooden stakes or the guts to go after the vampires bleeding us dry.

Vote Labor, Vote Socialist, Vote Communist, write in some one like Abu-Jamal Mumia for president or just stay home (except where things like Prop 8 are on the ballot).

Double-Income / No Kids doesn't cut it anymore, in some areas. Here, rents have nearly tripled over a two- to three-year span. And some of the things that enabled me to survive with nothing 20 years ago (i.e. the ability to fish out expired bread and food from the dumpster behind the local Safeway) are non-existent now, because of all the precautions that businesses, neighborhoods and the local authorities take to ensure they're not possible.

Although slightly different from tent cities, I'm finding that the single-most urgent problem with shelters is that while a few womens' shelters are starting to open up to MTFs, there are far fewer shelters (in many areas, none) open to FTMs.

Something else trans-specific, it's still angering when TSes are attacking other TSes for working in the sex trade in whatever capacity (escorting, street, porn). Whether or not it's a "bad image" of transsexuality is a question that pales compared to the realization that for some, it's the only realistic financial route out of poverty, let alone a means toward surgery (not that I recommend it). As if the worst thing that could happen is that a trans sister perpetuates a "shemale" stereotype. Grr.

BTW, I don't mean to harp on trans issues related to this or to erase other GLB perspectives, but it's what I know.

Patricia, thank you for outlining the problem and it is such a persistent one that pits the least powerful against the biggest obstacles. Every new homeless shelter (even in the basement of a church) comes with a constituency yelling NIMBY!

Not only are too many people one paycheck away from disaster they are one health crisis away, they are one relationship away, they are one mistake away, one car problem away from a breakup of the total fabric of life security.

It is happening in every country and continent in varying degrees and it is a male problem, a female problem, a child problem and a LGBT problem. It is aggravated domestically by families in crisis, drug use, and every domestic horror. How can we save these people?

My ideas: Paid for from the money we waste on military expenditure mandatory high school educations with accent on real world education needs. Pay the kids to stay in school and get good grades if you have to to keep them there if they cannot summon enough support from within their families to do so.

Then community service with a living wage salary followed by college or trade school opportunities.
Then assistance in placement. We have to stop homelessness before it starts rather than complain about it after it is rife.

For those who are homeless. A campus needs to be created in all population centers specializing in battered wives, another for teen drug abusers, another for employable people (GLBT or not) who through lack of an address cannot find work. Obviously properly subsidized housing vouchers would follow. In rural America the drug of ruin is Meth so we must find solutions that are flexible enough to deal with people where they are with their problems. Addicts are going to have to be separated from the people who can be helped sooner and treatment programs should not have to require divine intervention to obtain.

Presuming the cost of five Abrams tanks is fifty million it is not a question of money, but the will to declare war on our domestic problems rather than dream up foreign ones. We need to deploy our military expenditure and people to eliminate the urban and rural blight of drug use if we expect to make headway against these problems.

To this point we have been unwilling to do all we can to break this cycle tearing urban and rural America apart. There are some wonderful pilot programs underway even in Manhattan they just need expansion and funding. Homelessness is a domestic security issue.

The biggest reason for the lack of human rights in the USA is not homophobia or transphobia. Nor is it racism, sexism or ageism. The biggest reason for bigotry is the control most people (slaves) have voluntarily given to the rich. Whether a slave is living homeless or barely getting by in a heartless low paying job they have limited rights.

So why don't the slaves work together to change things? One word - religion. Mainstream religions, by design, brainwash people into becoming slaves of the powerful. Most religious people rather than show concern for this simply look for a group less powerful than they are to oppress since they have been taught that hatred is the way to go towards salvation. For example, most members of our relatively poor Black population take great joy in oppressing LGBT people.

Until and unless we as a nation address the biggest psychiatric illness in the USA, religiousness, we will continue to lose rights and struggle to get by.

No, this is definitely something we don't want to deal with in the US. It'll cost money, and the powers that be don't want to cough up.

So we think that imprisonment is the cheap alternative.

I seriously don't see how we can get past this stupidity.

Here in Indianapolis, we recently had a bridge severely damaged by fire. Why? Several homeless people had set up camp underneath of the bridge and a fire they were using for dinner and heat got out of hand.

The city's solution? Make sure no homeless people were staying under bridges.

'Cuz that'll solve the problem.

I worked for a gay housing agency in Seattle, WA. Although it claims to be diverse, if you look at its hierarchy you see all white, highly paid (compared to what they provide in services) directors and managers, with a bit of color and oppression to reflect the client population.

The housing is pretty much for people with AIDS; however, if someone with HIV needs rent assistance, they want to count the partner's income too. Isn't that wonderful. They can't get married, but if they live together, they want exclude that person from getting assistance by counting what the partner has.

In the shelters, it's a lot worse, you rarely see gays or transgender people at all. They have to play the severely mentally ill, whether they are or not, to try and protect themselves.

AIDS and living in a Tent City can be a near lethal combination.

We beg the government for more money, jump through the hoops, and claim we are powerless and have to do what the government wants in order to maintain funding.

The system is inherently cruel, but they help perpetrate it because it doesn't affect them--yet.

Patrica, thank you for this remarkable article...it is long overdue. I cannot express enough how much this hurts my soul. I have lived long enough to see so many changes and advancements in the gay movement but we, I dare say 'we' have made some progress in assisting out own. After all it is the gay community who ended up being the leaders in care support for our AIDS afflicted brothers and sisters. Still, we as a community need to take a more solvent approach in taking care of our youth, our aging, our sick and yes...our homeless or the ones who are one paycheck away from it.

I repeat, this hurts my soul. Thanks for writing this.